This lesson would have been a video lesson and posted in the "aspiring instructors" bit of the forum if I had a better digital camera.

I have decided to write this songwriting lesson to share my methods of songwriting with all the good people here at GMC.I am going to be using acoustic guitar to write this song and it's most likely to end up as a soft acoustic song. Nothing Fancy

First thing is, for this lesson I wont be using any advanced theory (probably no basic either).Also, I will be starting with no ideas, no thoughts on a subject for the song and no name. Im starting from scratch.

The first step that I go for is the music. Alot of people start writing lyrics or think of a song title to inspire them first (and im not saying theres anything wrong with that), but I prefer to write the music first as I think it's easier to write lyrics that match the music.

So, on we go...

Im going to start by writing a basic structure for the song, I WILL change the structure later, but this way I have a guide of what parts of the song I need to write.

Heres my template structure for now...

IntroVerseChorusRiffVerseChorusChorusOutro

Now I am going to write each part of the song a chord structure.I'm not going to be using any sus4's or whatever else chords there are... Its going to start out as basic chords (Am, E, D, etc) then evolve...

To write a part, just play some chords with a rythm thats in time, we can always change the rythm later if we want.

For the above I just played around with different picking patterns till i got something that sounded ok.

Now I need to repeat the process to write a new chord progression for the riff/chorus/intro/outro.

...

After playing around for a while I have decided that I am going to keep that chord progression all the way through all of the parts in the structure... however, doing that makes the verse and chorus sound indifferent so I am going to insert a prechorus which will build up to the chorus.

The song structure now stands like this...(the numbers are the names of the recordings I have uploaded throughout the post.)

We need an intro (which will probably be used as the riff too).Lets keep it over the same rythm we used for the verse (the picking)I'm just going to use the process we've used throughout the post... just play and see what sounds good to your ears!This time i'm not going to post all the riffs i come up with, im just going to post what I ended up liking.

after playing all the parts together, by the time it gets to the last chorus it's a little repetative so i'm going to add something near the end... maybe a breakdown, solo or bridge.I think adding a breakdown and solo between the last 2 chorus' then adding another chorus before the end would be a good idea.

now what I do is record the entire song with just the rythm (and little bits of lead like the intro/riff bitt)

That will be done soon, for now i'm off for some food.

------------------------CONTINUED-----------------------

ok, this is the recording of all the rythm parts. its 7 mins long! (dont worry about the quality, its all just a draft for the moment and hasnt been mixed at all yet.)... kinda reminds me of the quieter stuff iced earth do (i died for you, watching over me, when the eagle cries, etc)notice how i've changed the picking part a little to fit into the song better. i've also added a few hammer-on's/pull-off's here and there. if you follow the structure below you'll notice the parts changing.

i know alot of it sounds the same, but thats what the next part is for.we get to note down which parts were singing over, put a solo in, and add lead parts to make parts sound alot more different.

The first thing that needs changing is the solo/chorus part of the song. it need "beefing up".theres a few ways i know of doing this... adding harmonized guitar riffs in the background, adding a solo over the last chorus, add some more picking riffs, etc... just beef it up in general.time to go try it.

above is the solo/chorus part... ive improvised a solo on acoustic but i plan to do a totally different one with an electric guitar later on.as you can now hear, the riff in the background gets harmonized by a new guitar every 8 bars. the first 8 in the solo has just the rythm, then the riff comes in, then when the chorus kicks in its being harmonized, then halfway through the chorus an octave of the riff kicks in... thus giving the effect of building up.

its starting to look like a song now. all that needs doing is to make the bridge that little bit heavier by adding another guitar... then were on to writing the solo/lyrics/vocal melody.

heres my attempt at beefing up the bridge... its basically just palm muted guitar (works well with heavier songs, just thought i'd throw it in here as an example... still sounds ok )

now all thats left is the vocals/lyrics... which I find the hardest part so it may take a while for me to get some ideas... basically what im going to do is sing along with the music to get the melody and just adlib till I find something that I really like.

Song writing is the hardest thing to teach, because there's no right way to do it, everyone got their own way to do it, so the best way to learn is to read through guides like this one, showing the evolvment of the song, so what I'm trying is I think you made a really usefull guide to anyone who wants to start write their own music but is afraid to do so!